topic Need to move a few disks in a current aggregrate to a different aggregate on the same san in ONTAP Discussions

Need to move a few disks in a current aggregrate to a different aggregate on the same san

jkoelker01 — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 06:46:13 GMT

We currently have two aggregates setup on a NETAPP FAS2020 with Data ONTAP release 7.3.2. Currently the one aggregate is running at about 99% capacity and the other is only at 41%. I would like to take 2-3 of the disks in aggregate that is least full and move them over. How can this be accomplished? Does it have to be done off hours or can it be done without impact? I appreciate all the help. Thanks in advance.

Re: Need to move a few disks in a current aggregrate to a different aggregate on the same san

aborzenkov — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:11:50 GMT

It is not possible to shrink existing aggregate. You will have to backup data, destroy aggregate, recreate smaller one and restore data.

There is trick if aggregate is RAID_DP - convert it to RAID4 - this will remove one parity disk from each raid group and make it available. Sometimes this helps in the short term. But I would not consider it long term solution.

Do you really have aggregate filled with data or is it just space allocated for flexible volumes? You can easily reduce size of flexible volumes at any time.

Need to move a few disks in a current aggregrate to a different aggregate on the same san

wes_beckum — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 18:43:05 GMT

Another option is to vol copy or snapmirror data from the 99% capacity aggregate to your aggregate with space and then take the volumes offline and destroy on the aggregate running low on space.

Wes